AquaRegia

Thanks, and Happy New Year to the fountain pen SanderFans. Quiet, peaceful holidays here... no new pens but I continue to enjoy the pens and inks I have! I'm about 60% through Tress of the Emerald Sea.

Great points, well said!

I can see why it would be confusing... it IS called "The Well of Ascension", and according the the Coppermind, "The act of becoming a Vessel is called Ascension." However, since Leras continued to exist and function as the Vessel of Preservation (for 1000+ years) after Rashek's so-called "Ascension", Frustration is correct about him (and Hoid as well). I suppose this makes TLR Rashek a candidate as the "most powerful non-Shard" we've seen onscreen... I'd expect the God King Susebron to be another candidate. We really don't know enough about what Hoid has been up to, but I wouldn't leave him off the list. But others are much more qualified than I am to compare characters from different planetary and magical systems.

LOL the manga version draws itself in my head

I assumed Marasi heard a compound word which was half nonsense; something like "Fleeplight", where "light" is a word she recognizes, while "fleep" is not.

YES this makes sense. I forgot that Bleeder wore a mask sometimes. Well spotted. I'm a little sad that it's not a NEW character, though. ;-)

I was hoping someone else would start this topic, but I guess it falls to me. In today's State of the Sanderson stream, some jaw-dropping art was featured - uncommented on - and in addition to knocking my socks off, a few of the pieces raised some Cosmere-spoilery questions. I will spoiler-tag the images for size. Era-1 Mistborn; I assume Kelsier and Vin over Luthadel. Just gorgeous. Stormlight 5 Knights of Wind and Truth preview; Kaladin and Szeth enter Shinovar. What's the violet arc? Another Stormlight preview? My guess is Shallan, but the setting? Looks to be Shadesmar, but since when are there stars? And why does this image make me uneasy? Okay, this one is the most important question: who is this? My first guess was Iyatil, but her descriptions don't match... then I noticed the partly-visible skeleton. What we have here is a masked Kandra. Inquiring minds demand answers. The Main Hall of Venture Keep. Just WOW. The Imperial Palace of the Rose Empire, I assume. Also just gorgeous. Nothing but questions here. Help? Kharbranth. How can humans create such beauty?

The current state of our collection. You may notice a few other authors hidden in there. ;-) We are going to have to open up some serious space this coming year!

I worry about this as well. I love that he's willing to flex his "successful content creator" muscles in defense of authors everywhere... but Amazon has a LOT more muscle. Luckily, at least some of their decision-making process has to include public opinion, right? *crosses fingers*

In other words, like everything else, compounders will be exactly as rare (or as common) as they need to be in order for Brandon's stories to work the way he wants. I still remember trying to work out the Allomancer math that was revealed in HoA (one out of 16? 16 PERCENT? Does "percent" mean 1/100 on Scadrial? Why would they count by hundreds?? AARRGH) and finally giving up, because it's fantasy. It has never been "real" science.

Agreed, nobody is arguing that atoms in biomolecules are available for allomancy. Rather, we were discussing the reverse: could allomantic metals also be considered "nutrients"? Science + fantasy = weirdness.

Depends on what you mean by "similar nutrition". Sure, iron compounds in foods are more readily bioavailable... but what I said was "you can get all the iron you need by eating iron", and I stand by it. Iron filings have been a common ingredient in breakfast cereals for decades; when I taught chemistry I did a demo in which a magnet collects the iron powder from a bowl of corn flakes. If you have enough iron filings in your diet (and it would not take much), you don't need to eat any spinach. An iron atom is an iron atom, and it makes no difference whether that atom came from a nail or a leaf. Here's where fantasy "science" gets problematic. I could argue that the observed fact of Vin getting useful allomantic metals from drinking water or utensils rules out the idea of "intent" in the production of the metal. And if the only "intent" that matters is that of the allomancer, then we are back to "an iron atom is an iron atom". But ultimately, the actual Cosmere answer will be whatever Brandon needs it to be to tell his stories.

This assertion is confusing. An element, by definition, is pure. The human body acquires copper atoms and uses them to build necessary proteins and enzymes; it does not matter what the source of the copper atoms is. Although... I guess you could make the argument that since copper doesn't react with stomach acid, the metal AS AN ELEMENT can't be a "nutrient". The nutrient source of copper atoms must be compounds (not necessarily organic ones, however). You can get all the nutritional iron and zinc you need by eating the elemental metals.

Those are all perfectly reasonable points, and I'm (gradually) becoming willing to accept the in-universe "reasons" why things are the way they are on Scadrial... but I'm not sure I'm ever going to really buy it. In our history, conquest has never been the primary motivation for humans to explore the world. People didn't migrate from Africa to Europe, or from Asia to North America, because they were looking for someone to beat up. We are instinctively, fundamentally curious. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth to view Scadrians as humans somehow completely lacking in this one characteristic human trait. The relevant comparison of Era 2 Scadrial to exploration-era Earth also invites the consideration of another fundamental human quality: greed. Every major advance in mapping Earth was made by someone looking not for a fight, but a way to GET RICH. We've seen plenty of textual evidence that Scadrians like accumulating wealth just as much as we do. The Allomancer Jak stories demonstrate that there is a hunger in Elendel both for adventure and for seeking ancient or mythical treasures. They have legends of "lost metals" and magical artifacts objectively based in reality; it seems to me that that alone should have been more than sufficient to motivate someone - at the very least - to rusting circumnavigate the coastline of their rusting continent! It's been 350 years, call it 15-20 generations, since the Catacendre. People get bored, they get restless, they are curious and greedy. I don't think it will ever really make sense to me that they progressed to skyscrapers, locomotives, and steel navies, but have never explored the coastline 200 miles from their home, neither on land nor by sea. The bottom line is that the stories Brandon wants to tell depend on things being as they are. I'm working on accepting that, even if it doesn't fit my idea of "reality".

Not arguing for or against any particular candidate, just want to point out that to a human native of Roshar, ANYONE from Scadrial would look "short".

We've been told that many current cosmere languages derive from Yolish tongues, which has always caused me to assume migration... but I suppose it's not necessarily inconsistent with divine creation either.

Thanks all! I guess I've been fixated on Perpendicularities being associated with Shards for so long I couldn't conceive of such things predating them, which is silly since Adonalsium contained all the Investiture that they now hold separately... and presumably whatever came BEFORE Adonalsium could have connected the Realms as well. I don't know why I'm surprised every time my incomplete understanding of the cosmere is shown to be incomplete. Ego, anyone? It's only happened about a thousand times already LOL This idea both intrigues and terrifies me. I hope that means it will make for an amazing story someday!

Yes, I get that part. Humans were created by Shards on Scadrial and Nalthis. This is my question. The implication is that humans definitely lived on Sel, on Threnody, on Ashyn, on Taldain, on First of the Sun, and likely others, BEFORE the Shattering. When and how did those migrations happen? Are we supposed to assume humans could travel through the Cognitive Realm without Shards or Perpendicularities? Or that they had Physical Realm interstellar travel in the past? Neither one makes any sense to me.

When and how did humans leave Yolen for other planets? The Coppermind entry on Yolen tells us that 1) "Yolen is one of the oldest inhabited worlds in the cosmere, and the first on which humans have appeared." 2) "Following the Shattering, most Shards left Yolen to go their own separate ways. Many humans have also abandoned it, spreading across the cosmere." Implied is a timeline thus: humans live only on Yolen --> Adonalsium --> The Shattering --> Humans and Shards emigrate to other systems. Cool? Rereading Arcanum Unbounded, I just stumbled across this claim, by Khriss, in the Scadrian System Prologue: "It is one of only two places in the cosmere where humankind does not predate the arrival of Shards." Say what now? Khriss is positively asserting that every single human-inhabited system known (in her "present") already had humans before any Shards showed up (except Scadrial and one other). How did humans accomplish travel to other planetary systems without Shards? How did they manage to get there FASTER than the Shards?

My son and I were just talking about Kelsier and Scadrial yesterday, and I realized I've been swimming in Cosmere lore for so long now that it's often impossible for me to be sure whether something I "know" comes explicitly from the text, or from a WoB, or from a podcast, or from 17S theorycraft. This 17th Shard metareality is making our fictional Cosmere reality even more confusing LOL

Interesting idea. I will point out that while Frava is wearing gold and red the first time Shai meets her, this is not always the case; on day seventeen she wears "robes of a soft violet". I'm not convinced that everyone who has ever worn red or gold must be an agent of Autonomy.

Q1: Q2: Q3: And before you ask, I don't do any other social media that uses rep, so N/A.

I hate to agree so hard but this is spot on. This should be the top testimonial on the book jacket LOL A number of people have said this. I just finished rereading The Emperor's Soul, then skimmed over Moonlight's big scenes, and I think Moonlight is very much Shai - intelligent, sneaky, self-confident, quite a smartass, cool and in control even facing death. The big differences are 1) she's older and more experienced now, 2) we spent the entirety of tES inside Shai's head, and so were privy to her thoughts and feelings, which is not the case at any point in tLM, and 3) due to the major differences in writing style, Moonlight does read like a sort of YA version of Shai. Sadly, I think, any time a character we've had a very close and intimate look at previously makes a reappearance as a cameo in someone else's story, they will inevitably seem to be only a pale shadow of themselves to some degree.

If true, that would make me VERY happy! The lack of closure there definitely left a bad taste in my mouth.

I don't have any actual answers to any of your questions; in fact, I'm a bit disillusioned myself at how many questions tLM didn't answer, and how many new ones it posed. Just a few thoughts: It is strongly implied that Kelsier has NO allomancy or feruchemy in his current form. If true, he could not have made the Bands. We're all confused by this. It seems very unlikely to me that Rashek's body survived post-Catacendre. I think he literally turned to dust when 1000 years of Atium compounding caught up with him. Plus, I can't think of any reason Harmony would have wanted that thing around. I got the impression that the Kelsier that Marasi saw looked just like Era 1 Kelsier. The most popular idea here is that he made a body using his actual bones (canonically saved by OreSeur) and a nonsentient mistwraith body. Intent, Identity, and self-image are very important in Cognitive Shadow situations, which means he'd have the scars because he sees himself as The Lord of Scars.